Papal Enthronement Might Delay Rome Marathon

March 17 race will start at 4 p.m. if new pope is enthroned race-day morning.

Here's a new excuse for a sub-par marathon performance: "My normal pre-race routine was thrown off by the new pope's enthronement ceremony."

That excuse might be available to runners in the Rome Marathon, to be run March 17. The race is scheduled to start at 9 a.m., but will start at 4 p.m. that day if it turns out that the new pope is enthroned that morning.

With the surprise resignation of Pope Benedict XVI last month, cardinals have gathered in Rome to elect the new pope. Before resigning, Pope Benedict altered the papal election process so that the new pope could be in place before Easter, which falls on March 31 this year.

If the new pope is elected such that the enthronement occurs on March 17, then preparing the city for the ceremony, which includes attendance by several heads of state, would take precedence over the marathon. Race organizers would have to wait until later that day to do the race set-up work they would normally do in the days before. In turn, that postponed set-up would push the race start to 4 p.m.

The papal election process is famously mysterious, and race officials have been given no inside information on the timing of the election.

"This isn’t the most decipherable [of] situations," the marathon's Facebook page points out. "Forecasting the weather is an easy job in comparison with forecasting the schedule of a papal conclave."

The race has announced that, if the papal ceremonies necessitate an afternoon start, runners can defer their registration to the 2014, 2015, or 2016 marathon.